


Ghosts

by notsafeforowls



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Mentions of Earth-74 Nate Heywood's death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21816076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsafeforowls/pseuds/notsafeforowls
Summary: Mick's seen ghosts before. This is somehow even worse.
Relationships: implied Nate Heywood/Mick Rory
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	Ghosts

Mick’s seen ghosts before. He’s never been able to work out if they’re in his mind or if it happened because the Time Masters had scrambled his brain so many times at the Vanishing Point, but he’s seen the Englishman several times. He’s even seen a guy who claims to be the person the Leonard AI was based on.

This, though? This is so much worse.

Mick can tolerate the mess that the survivors are making of his ship. He can even put up with the stupid celebrations that they’re throwing, the total inability of anyone who isn’t a Legend on Earth-1 to find the bathroom without asking him, the constant stream of strangers showing up in his _home_ , and Mick will freely admit that baby Jon, who’s handling the crowd better than some of the adults, is the best guest on the ship.

He can even put up with the Earth-1 Legends hanging around. Their Sara keeps commenting on the small differences between the ships. Behrad keeps arguing with Leonard. Ray keeps trying to give Mick advice. Mick can even put up with the Earth-1 version of himself, who’s apparently very successful and very close to the other Legends (and maybe that one had hurt a bit at first, the way that Sara’s face lit up when she saw her team and the way she’d tried not to cry when she hugged them all.)

Their Nate, though. That’s more difficult to come to terms with.

“That’s for dying, Pretty,” Earth-1 Mick says, shoving at his Nate’s arm hard enough to make Nate stumble a few steps.

“Ouch! You died too!” Nate laughs and steals a bottle of beer as revenge.

Except that isn’t his Nate. His Nate wouldn’t have even felt that, let alone been moved by it. He hadn’t been able to feel much of anything, thanks to his powers. Mick’s seen this one using his powers. He can switch them on and off whenever he wants to, it’s not (what _his_ Nate had always called) a constant state of being. There are other reasons that isn’t his Nate as well. The dog tags that he still wears, which this one didn’t put in his old man’s coffin.

And, of course, the all-important detail: this Nate is alive, while Mick’s died at Heyworld, his throat crushed by Neron, and not even magic was enough to save him. Not even love.

This Nate was brought back. Mick got Leonard to look up the date and he saw the footage with his own eyes. The death. The resurrection. All those news reports about magic and demons and the power of love. And Mick can’t help but hate them a little for it, for succeeding where his Legends failed.

“I’ve never met one of Mick’s doppelgangers before,” Nate says conversationally as he steps in front of Mick, offering him a bottle of beer.

Mick grunts in response. From what he’s heard, most of the other Micks have been dead by the time the Earth-1 Legends have met anyone from those Earths.

“Ray said that your Earth is a lot like ours.”

At least some things are the same on all Earths: Ray Palmer never shuts up.

“It was.” Mick recognises enough of his old team in the Earth-1 Legends that he knows that they probably diverged the most at Heyworld. Sure, there were some differences between them before that: why Mick was recruited (a ploy by the Time Masters on his Earth, a necessity to get Leonard Snart on theirs) but Heyworld was where it had all changed. He shrugs and flicks the cap off the beer. “Things changed.”

Or, rather, it had all changed _after_ Heyworld. When Ray had been unable to be in the same room as the rest of the team. When the weasel had left, claiming that he had failed everyone and that he’d only fail the rest of them. When Sara and Ava had left after the Bureau had been dissolved. When Mona and Charlie had gone off to Heyworld to make sure that the magical creatures were okay. When Zari, her family’s future just as bad or maybe even worse thanks to Neron, had said ‘screw it’ and gone back to 2042 to try and make people’s lives a little bit better.

He should contact them, even if he hasn’t bothered for months, and none of them have tried either. They’re probably wondering what the hell has been going on.

Nate gives Mick a funny look, like he’s trying to work something out. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

Mick prepares himself for the obvious. “Depends what it is, Nate.”

Nate blinks at him, confused, before he asks, “The version of me on your Earth… Is he…?” He glances back at Ray. “Ray said you got a weird look on your face when you saw me earlier. Is your Nate dead?”

“No,” Mick says, and he honestly doesn’t mean to lie. It just happens. “He retired after his old man died, got some fancy government job when everybody found out about magical creatures. The last I heard, he was helping some of them get official identification and working on some laws or something to protect them.”

The smile on Nate’s face is worth the lie. He’s not Mick’s Nate, he’s never going to _be_ Mick’s Nate, but for a few seconds, Mick can look at a living version of Nate and imagine his own standing on the ship again.

“Huh, that’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah, it is.” His Nate would have done that, if he’d lived, Mick’s sure of it. The law part, not the government job – his Nate would have stayed on the ship and tried to do everything at once.

The team would have stayed together.

Nate opens his mouth to say something else, but he’s interrupted by the other Mick calling, “Come on, Pretty, hurry up before the stupid AI poisons me.”

“Sorry, I need to make sure that Mick doesn’t die because he pissed off your AI. It was nice to meet you,” and the handshake before Nate walks away is different as well. As is the way that Nate turns on the charm when he’s trying to convince Leonard not to poison his Mick.

And if Mick lets Lois wave him over to a quieter corner of the galley to show off his babysitting skills to some of her friends, but spends the next fifteen minutes watching Nate with his Mick, searching for the little differences between their relationships and his with his own Nate, then at least there’s no one there to realise what he’s doing.

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of tweaked canon to make an Earth-74 that's a little bit different from Earth-1, so on Earth-74, Leonard was always the AI instead of Gideon, Mick's recruitment was the result of the Time Masters wanting him to be recruited specifically so they could create Chronos, and Nate's powers are a bit more like they are in the comics. And, of course, Earth-74 Nate was the Legend who died on that Earth.


End file.
